What is Web Analytics and Why is it Crucial for Online Marketing Success?

by Brian Offenberger, 7/6/2006

Do you know what your website is telling you? A crucial part of your online marketing efforts lie in understanding your website traffic patterns. If you don't know how people find your site, what they do once they're on your site, how long they stay on the site, what they respond to and what they reject, you won't achieve maximum online results.

Look at your website traffic logs

Information is collected as visitors find and move through your website. This information is displayed on what is referred to as "traffic logs." This marketing data is pure because it is collected mechanically as visitors move freely throughout your website. Your website offers unprecedented opportunities to gather visitor and customer behavior data. Keep reading to learn more about this valuable information source.

Traffic logs provide key indicators of online marketing performance

Before diving into the wealth of data available through these logs, let's clear up a common misconception that exists amongst most business executives: "hits" really aren't a sound indicator of website traffic. A "hit" is counted every time a visitor requests a page or every individual image that a visitor requests. This means that the vast majority of visits generate multiple "hits" per visit. Ratios of "hits" to individual visits can be quite high.

The first section of the traffic log shows visits and/or visitor sessions. This is the indicator to use concerning site traffic measurements. This section also shows the average time per visit spent with the website.

Pay attention to the most requested and least requested page information contained within the traffic log. This is great information for business development purposes as well as many other applications.

Traffic logs show what is known as "top entry pages." These are the first pages that a visitor sees when coming to a website, and great sites drive entry traffic to multiple pages, not just the home page. The information contained here helps you determine what is driving the traffic to your site. It also assists in helping make decisions concerning overall site navigation.

Logs also show what pages visitors use to exit your site. At a minimum, these exit pages should match your expectations and should contain strong call to action statements.

Some visitors only visit one page of a website and then go off the site. These "single entry pages" again reveal a lot about your site. Your site may be too slow in loading, may not have contained what the visitor is looking for etc. There is a myriad of potential strategies and tactics revealed in the page information within the traffic log.

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Since the birth of the commercial Internet good writing has driven the development and search engine positioning of web sites. Good web site content (next to keywords) has been and always will be the King, Queen and whole Royal Court of marketing success on the web. When you're trying to develop a successful web site you soon realize that your web site content is an important part of your success strategy. Read 'Internet Marketing Strategy: The Write Way To Get Web Site Traffic'.

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